Doesn't look like much work today, and it wasn't, but...
I am trying different approaches to modeling these complex shapes while keeping the spline count manageable. Lot's of trial and error, and doing things twice or three times:o
It's kind of a pain in the you know where, when everything is self taught. Thank goodness for many of the wonderful tutorials on the web. Special thanks to Chris Tate for his excellent tuts.
Spline count right now is at 412,500. Once I'm done with modeling, I'll go through the mesh and thin it out. I bet I can get it down 20 to 25% or more without altering the shape too much.
Wow, what a challenge! Every piece is giving me trouble. Getting the skin smooth while putting cuts or lines in the skin is giving me fits. Just making that top part of the nacelle is a process. I guess I'm just tired. Will post an update when I have something worthwhile to show.
Finally some progress! I was having loads of trouble getting the vent taper to look smooth, but I persevered. Always learning in the process, so hopefully things will speed up a bit.
Thanks for the encouragement, I really need it. Don't know why, but this model has become somewhat of an obsession with me now. Once I get challenged, it's on...
You're really doing great work on this. Anybody who tackles this ship has my respect, it's a very complex design with all of the curves. Plus, you're learning software while building this, that's absolutely mind boggling, IMO.
I've thought once or twice of modeling this ship. And then I laughed and laughed and laughed....
Need some guidance please. I'm working on the nacelles and am getting the woozies just looking at the pic below. How many parts is this whole beautiful mess? I tried making the body of the nacelle and then extracting the fin out of it, but now I am re-thinking that and wondering if I should make the body and fins separate - easier to work on the fins - and then connect the fins later?
Tobias, if you are peeking in here now and then, could you give me an idea of how to re-create your lighting of the nacelles? I have no idea of lighting in Max and have yet to figure out how to make the nice light ring around the top of the nacelles casting light along the sides as in the pic below. Hope I'm explaining this correctly.
Thanks for any help.
Eric
ps That dome looks a lot like the dome on top of the bridge.
Started the main body of the bussards over again. The lower portion and the middle portion are now one piece. The top piece hasn't changed. I'll model the fins separately and stitch them on later.
I placed an area light at each of the lightstrips - but you might get away with final gather and a very bright material as well. I just prefer real lights.
First test - the only lights in the scene are the lights around the bussards. For some reason they are going right through the model and illuminating the far bussard and also the saucer section. Haven't figured out how to stop that from happening yet. FYI, I am using Max 9 with Mental Ray and shadows turned on for the Omni lights.
Obviously not the right solution since I should be able to have a falloff as long as I want without the light going through an object. It's all right for now since that will be solved down the road. Back to modeling.
Yes, falloff is a necessary tool when you're doing this kind of lighting, though I don't know why the light is going through the object. You do have shadows enabled for those lights, right? I know nothing about Max, but I know I can do lighting effects like this in trueSpace by having the lights in there with a short falloff and shadows enabled. So that the light shows through the objects I want it to, (the supposed light emitters) I disable shadow casting on those objects. I'd imagine there are settings that will allow you to do this in Max.
I like the way that is looking so far, even if the lights aren't working the way you'd like them to.
Yes, falloff is a necessary tool when you're doing this kind of lighting, though I don't know why the light is going through the object. You do have shadows enabled for those lights, right? I know nothing about Max, but I know I can do lighting effects like this in trueSpace by having the lights in there with a short falloff and shadows enabled. So that the light shows through the objects I want it to, (the supposed light emitters) I disable shadow casting on those objects. I'd imagine there are settings that will allow you to do this in Max.
I like the way that is looking so far, even if the lights aren't working the way you'd like them to.
The best thing I've found in Max, to get it to be applied to the objects you want, is by adding the rest of the objects to the exclude list for the light... except for the objects you want to be affected by the light, and the objects you want to have an affect on the light's shadows, that's how I got the lights on the side of the refit Connie's nacelles to illuminate the outside grilling, while nothing else, on the nacelle, even though the light object itself would clearly illuminate a good chunk of the nacelle.
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB 1TB NVMe SSD, 2 x 1GB SATA SSD, 4TB external HDD 32 GB RAM Windows 11 Pro
Thanks for the input guys. Yes, I do have shadows enabled. Come to think of it, I was using another 3d app in which I also got some results with light lists. I'll play around with that a bit later. On to a bit more modeling.
Nice work. Watching the movie and seeing Tobias' pics, I never realized that was a bunch of individual glowy bits, I just thought it was a single glowy thing with a grill over it.
Not to worry, I've been working on the ole girl quite a bit, just not much to show since a lot of the work is refining what is already there.
Tobias, could you shoot me something that would help in deciphering the construction of the front of the bussards? I've been looking at that and ...then I go hide before the headache comes. What was your total poly count? I'm approaching 1 meg, but that's before cleanup.
Amazing how much detail there is on this ship, it's very deceiving.
Worked on the bridge shell - cutting the 10 window slats in the back was quite a pain. Also removed the two portholes in the side and re-worked the shape of the shell. Port holes will be re-cut a bit later since I'm still not happy with the overall shape of the bridge housing. Added more detail to the dome on the housing and will likely re-do the dome itself since it looks more complex than just a simple dome. On the back of the saucer, I cut the stripes going around and finished that off quite nicely IMHO. More to go....
Worked on the wing support structures holding the Nacelles. After I started cutting in the relief work on the underside, I noticed how it really messed up the nice flow I had going. Turbo smooth isn't the end all smoother. Unless I am doing something very wrong, there is still a lot of work to be done arranging topology and pushing vertices around. It took me a couple of hours just to straighten the underside of the wing after adding all the support for the various cuts. That included the cuts for the vents in the trailing edge of the wings. As you can see in the pic, the upper or inside face of the wings hasn't been worked on yet, but I am tired and will sleep on it.
This is looking really good. I respect your ambition for attempting such a challenging model even though you're new to Max. Just remember that when you use Turbosmooth, it is extremely important to keep quads. This means you can't have any non four sided polygons. Since Turbosmooth subdivides every polygon by four, it doesn't work very well with n-gons (polygons with fewer or more than four sides). Triangles can be OK, but you should avoid them if possible. Hope this helps.
Posts
I am trying different approaches to modeling these complex shapes while keeping the spline count manageable. Lot's of trial and error, and doing things twice or three times:o
It's kind of a pain in the you know where, when everything is self taught. Thank goodness for many of the wonderful tutorials on the web. Special thanks to Chris Tate for his excellent tuts.
What's the poly count thus far?
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB
1TB NVMe SSD, 2 x 1GB SATA SSD, 4TB external HDD
32 GB RAM
Windows 11 Pro
You're really doing great work on this. Anybody who tackles this ship has my respect, it's a very complex design with all of the curves. Plus, you're learning software while building this, that's absolutely mind boggling, IMO.
I've thought once or twice of modeling this ship. And then I laughed and laughed and laughed....
Tobias, if you are peeking in here now and then, could you give me an idea of how to re-create your lighting of the nacelles? I have no idea of lighting in Max and have yet to figure out how to make the nice light ring around the top of the nacelles casting light along the sides as in the pic below. Hope I'm explaining this correctly.
Thanks for any help.
Eric
ps That dome looks a lot like the dome on top of the bridge.
I placed an area light at each of the lightstrips - but you might get away with final gather and a very bright material as well. I just prefer real lights.
I know I should be working on modeling, and I am , but playing around with lights is a bit of a change up.
So many options on doing the lights - some experiments to follow soon.
I like the way that is looking so far, even if the lights aren't working the way you'd like them to.
The best thing I've found in Max, to get it to be applied to the objects you want, is by adding the rest of the objects to the exclude list for the light... except for the objects you want to be affected by the light, and the objects you want to have an affect on the light's shadows, that's how I got the lights on the side of the refit Connie's nacelles to illuminate the outside grilling, while nothing else, on the nacelle, even though the light object itself would clearly illuminate a good chunk of the nacelle.
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB
1TB NVMe SSD, 2 x 1GB SATA SSD, 4TB external HDD
32 GB RAM
Windows 11 Pro
Tobias, could you shoot me something that would help in deciphering the construction of the front of the bussards? I've been looking at that and ...then I go hide before the headache comes. What was your total poly count? I'm approaching 1 meg, but that's before cleanup.
Amazing how much detail there is on this ship, it's very deceiving.
Worked on the bridge shell - cutting the 10 window slats in the back was quite a pain. Also removed the two portholes in the side and re-worked the shape of the shell. Port holes will be re-cut a bit later since I'm still not happy with the overall shape of the bridge housing. Added more detail to the dome on the housing and will likely re-do the dome itself since it looks more complex than just a simple dome. On the back of the saucer, I cut the stripes going around and finished that off quite nicely IMHO. More to go....
Cheers
Eric
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqRhLEHgwgTKxsalM5YznYQ
Formerly furswift